Obesity and/or being overweight is one of the most common causes of health problems. There are numerous health benefits which are realized by maintaining a “healthy” weight. The best way to control a person's weight is through regular exercise and a well balanced diet. Under extreme cases of obesity, weight loss is facilitated through medication(s) to curve the appetite, and/or surgery, whereby staples are used to physically reduce the volume of the stomach that is available.
No matter how overweight the patient is and no matter how aggressive the weight loss treatment, efforts toward achieving a “healthy” or goal weight will ultimately fail if the patient's eating behavior is not modified. In fact, in the absence of corrective eating behavior, aggressive treatments, such as medications and surgery, can lead to the death of the patient.
There are numerous diets and/or methods for cataloging the content and/or nutritional/caloric intake of an individual. Most diet methods are extremely complex and difficult to follow. For example, many diets require special foods that are difficult to find, vitamin supplements that can be expensive, and/or complex documentation that must be maintained by the user to determine the proper caloric intake. Most of these complex diets fail as the person quickly returns to their regular eating habits in frustration.
What is needed is a simple system for and method of assisting individuals to control their nutritional consumption without requiring enormous changes in dietary content, which do not necessitate specialized foods or vitamins, and which will gradually modify the eating habits of the person.